When a lake goes bad!

Two years ago, Buttermilk (My fishing buddy) and I, kayak fished Greenbrier Lake, a small lake near my home near Nashville TN. As you can see from the photo's, the water was nice, clear with a few water lilies and milfoil.

The water lilies seemed to add to the fishing fun because you could just imagine a big bass waiting to blast out of the water, except we only caught small perch. 

There was some milfoil, but not too much. We made a return visit to this lake just a few weeks ago and was shocked to find that the lake was completely unfishable, if that's a word.

Check-it out! Who needs a kayak when you can almost walk across the lake. It's obvious that there's too much nutrient rich run off from the surrounding area. When I walked up to the lakes edge, I smelled a septic odor. No doubt, there's a lot of biological activity going on here and it's not fish.

We didn't even remove our kayaks from our vehicles. Who would fish in these waters? It's amazing how fast a fairly large body of water can fill up with algae. Two years ago, there were a family of beavers, a great blue heron and many ducks.

Today, we didn't see very much wildlife, except for these ducks. It looked like one had to play Coast Guard Cutter to make a path through the muck! This is what happens when a lake goes bad.

I hope this lake makes a comeback because it was such a beautiful lake! However, the little research that I've done on a milfoil problem this large indicates that it will require help and likely take a long time to recover.   

 Always Remember: Get away from the big screen and get on a big stream!